Environmental Scan for my Project

My own project is to construct a story of Florida’s paleo-Native American sites across different digital tools using the same information and data to test each tool with how it handles and presents information differently. The different digital tools will include those with a mapping component, time line component, pictorial components, interactive components, as well as static components to critically evaluate a variety of different tools on their story telling capabilities. An important component of this project is to analyze how each tool presents the same story in a different way based on its function, features, limitations, and ease of use. My scan of the environment on this particular topic has, so far, produced no other copies of research similar to the tools test I seek to employ. Most similarities I have seen have only been websites from the digital humanities department at different universities offering descriptive lists of each tool and occasional showcases for each tool. However, these showcases are not using the same dataset, crafted information, or creator such as seen on UCF’s center for digital research’s website found here: https://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/projects.html.  Other websites that list tools and there function can be found here: https://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176357&p=1158575 and https://libguides.utk.edu/dh/tools.

                Other projects that can serve as a point of similarity for my project use a tool or method to present Native American history. While not using the same information or a variety of different tools, the closeness to the concept of Florida Paleo-Native American history and digital presentation should be noted. Such projects can be found here: https://lostworlds.org/exhibits/florida/public-indian-sites-florida/ this project serves to spatially layout a variety of different publicly accessible sites on interactive map on a website to host different information. Another would be found here: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=201 which seeks to present a whole host of information on Florida Native American history segmented by topic in as a static webpage but does not present any visual storytelling aspect and simply serves as printed text available on a digital space. A third project could be the Florida Department of State’s Native American Heritage Trail pdf  which serves as a digital presentation that is visually appealing and serves to tell a contextualized story yet does so in a static, but readably available way.

                My project will differ from those already in the field by presenting the same information through a variety of different tools and methods including both interactive and static to provide a way to contextualize each tool on a standard for comparative means.

ASSERT: steps to forming the project

Ask- How can we use interactive visualization to better educate K-12 and public audiences on the prehistory and history of native Americans in Florida?

Search- The data that I searched for that fits within the scope of the question I seek to answer is mainly secondary sources and online resources. Some of these resources include online information from Florida’s Division of Historical Resources, and Florida Anthropological societies. Other secondary source information would be some of the bureau of archaeological research journals on particular sites in order to compile a list of archaeological sites, dates, and cultures. Other data would be photos from these sites or of primary source materials to compliment the information.

Structure-The main takeaway from the chapter on structure was the LATCH acronym. Structuring the data in terms of location such as a map through visualeyes can express the geographic information of each of these sites and cultures, time can also apply through visualeyes and the map in order to display potential causality. Structuring data geographically, temporally, and culturally is how I envision answering this question.

Envision- This chapter for my particular interest is somewhat limited in application but qualitative analysis would be useful in analyze the data structures. But most analysis of data has to happen after representing it in order to see trends and adapt the project to become more publicly oriented.

Represent- As far as representing the information goes, using visualeyes is probably the best way to represent my data. Dealing with a time frame from 13,000 BCE -1600 CE is easiest to comprehend on a timeline, yet the temporal locations and their geographic relations would be lost if just a timeline were to be used. Which is why I believe visualeyes would be the best tool as of right now. Being able to represent the data on a map, its temporal location, and the written word and photographs all integrated on the same webpage makes it an easy choice. The additional use of having pop-ups which can display smaller segments of information lends itself to public use by making the project easier to navigate for the interested party. The timeline grouping feature of visualeyes is also phenomenal for this project because it allows the anthropologic temporal-cultural groups, such as Weeden island culture, eastern woodland, or mortuary pond, to be presented chronologically which assist in the general understanding of these sites to the lay public.

Tell- The story I hope to tell through this project is one that seeks to convey the known archaeological and anthropological past of Florida prehistory in a way that is understandable to the general public. The map and timeline can serve as useful tools for contextualizing the past but the overall narrative is where I hope to tell a story that can educate the public but while activity being broken up by location and temporal cultural classifications.

Ask a question, Search for data

Bill’s introduction seeks to set interactive visualization into context by first exploring why visualization is important. He does this by providing many examples that serve his argument with one such example being Anscombe’s Quartet which on paper have similar trends in data but once visualized showed how different the data set appears on a graph. Bill then dives into a history of data visualization and its progression until the internet and how the internet impacted visualization and including its introduction into the scholarly field. Bill also debates theories and methods behind visualization including a list of useful models to creative a valuable interactive visualization project before putting forth his own model which we will be using in this class.

The ASSERT model stands for ask a question, search for information, structure the data, envision the answer, represent the visualization, and tell a story. It’s the first two categories that the class this week is to focus on. My general topic of interest relates to Florida during the paleolithic era moving into pre-Seminole time and my initial reaction is to want to map it in some visually interactive way but I found a static map was already done, and based off of Bill’s recommendations in forming a question I am running into difficulty when looking at a new way to frame this. I intend to frame this as a public history project with the audience being the lay public and this project serving as a point of public education and engagement about the change over time in Florida’s pre-contact period because I often find the dominate narrative claims that the Seminole tribe has lived in Florida for thousands of years https://www.archaeologicalconservancy.org/event/floridas-mangrove-tour-2019/.  With this focus in mind, representing change over time in Florida prehistory, I moved the second stage of Bill’s model.

Searching for information on this topic is something I already have done. Many archaeological journals and press releases exists and were not too difficult to find and each describes the culture surrounding each site. What will be interesting is if any questions come second, as Bill describes it, from the data and finding the best tool to represent this data in a helpful and interactive way to transcend the purpose of the map provided by Florida’s Division of Historical Resources.

Bill’s introduction and first two chapters raise interesting concepts about tailoring a project to an audience.  A scholar that realizes the constraints of k-12 teaching due to standardized testing and their needs being different than that of the lay public, or key interest groups, or graduate students, is refreshing. This awareness of different groups within the public sphere and the attention span, background knowledge, and computer limitations that may be different in each group provide a thoughtful backdrop when it comes to designing the visual aspect of the project or structing the data. I feel that for my project, this will all come together in structing the data and testing different visualization models to determine which audience I’ll tailor the project towards, and which model will help me best tell my story. I feel like this is why Bill’s model is so versatile, because perhaps your target audience is the most important aspect that drives your project, or your data,  or your initial question, and this process for data visualization can lend itself towards all of these aspects and can widen the berth of projects that find this process a helpful.

Question for Bill: Interactive visualization seems to lend itself well to the Public historian’s tool kit. How would you address concerns over ‘Is the format of interactive visualization useful for or as scholarship?’ 

A Review of Florida History in 3D

Florida History in 3D, http://floridahistoryin3d.com/. Created and maintained by Florida Division of Historical Resources. Reviewed Oct. 3-8, 2019.

Viewing artifacts in a museum has always been limited by space. Space in terms of distance traveled to the museum and space as it relates to the confines of the museum’s show floor and archives. This problem of space can often be eliminated, for the most part, by digital collections. Many museums and archives have taken to photographs to digitize their materials in an effort to reach a wider audience with greater ease. However, Florida History in 3D takes it a step farther by digitizing archaeological materials into 3D rendered models by using photogrammetry to preserve the integrity of the object as viewed in person.

                Florida History in 3D is a project that launched on March 16^th, 2018 by Florida’s Division of Historical Resources as a website that is available for computers and mobile devices. The website’s design is appealing and straightforward. Either by clicking the four simple tabs or scrolling down you can view the project’s purpose, a history of Spanish plate fleets (the inaugural collection), the gallery, and a map of some, but not all, Florida museums. This project is relevant to my own research because it uses the digital tools I also intend to use in my research and relates to bringing Florida artifacts from the archives into an easy to access public space. 

                The gallery is where most of the website’s substance can be found featuring 18 of the most visually appealing artifacts from the Spanish Plate Fleet collection. The artifacts are divided amongst three categories and once viewed, produce an interactive high-resolution 3D model with interactive touchpoints revealing more information about the object in addition to the description and the function of the object complete with a scholarly reference.

                The project is useful as a teaching tool for students interested in learning about Spanish Plate Fleets and the concept of Florida History in 3D as a whole is likely to be a great tool for teaching on a variety of subjects in Florida’s history. However, therein lies the projects greatest fault. Its inaugural collection of 18 artifacts relating to Spanish Plate Fleets is the only collection. While the presentation and goal of the project is remarkable and shows great promise, a year and seven months after its debut with no additional collections or updates begins to beg the question if the project is serious in its goal, lacking funding, or just a showcase of photogrammetry for Florida’s artifacts.

                The projects educational focus on only the most stunning artifacts betrays its orientation to the public. Operating as a showcase instead of a comprehensive gallery assist scholars little, however it is clear this was never the intent. The project is first and foremost a digital exhibit and educational resource which allows for a wide array of uses. A showcase for learning the use of primary archaeological sources, or a delve into learning about material culture this project can not only teach the history of a particular topic, showcase primary sources using high resolution 3D models, and point out Florida museums on map for those interested in more, but the project can do all of this from any device with internet connection that can navigate to websites.

                The reach of the project is perhaps its greatest strength, being able to display artifacts with incredible accuracy anywhere without being limited by distance and time as well as its easy to navigate interface makes this project widely accessible. While there are no publicly available metrics to determine its total reach, the 3D models are hosted on sketchfab.com and their models have as little as 41 views to a few hundred with the total view count around 1.4 thousand. This project by Florida’s Division of Historical Resources proves itself a phenomenal tool for educational purposes and for the public, however its lack of support in branching out from its inaugural roots to realize its goal is a troubling sign of a shelved project which is a critique it cannot shake.

Trevor D. Colaneri

University of Central Florida – Orlando

Orlando, Florida

Geographies of the Holocaust

Knowles, Anne Kelly et al. Geographies of the Holocaust. Indiana University Press, 2014.

Geographies of the Holocaust is a multidisciplinary collaborative project surrounding the use of GIS in context of studying the Holocaust. The book opens with an outline and summary of how the book is structured and came to be before setting off on a variety of case studies. Creating a unified scholarly approach, such as defining scale, is part of the introduction and explored how each project would use it from the national down to the individual streets and persons. Additionally the defining of space and place in context of the case studies helped provide a universal understanding of each project; traditionally being an abstract concept that would serve to hurt a project, the first chapter explains how GIS can be used to understand space and place in context of their respective project, such as the confining nature of the Jewish ghetto in Budapest or the view one might have of Auschwitz or the paths that many were forced to travel. The opening chapter closes with a statement about a quantitative approach when it comes to data that, for each project, will be then qualitatively analyzed for its context and meaning with a similar approach to the process of mapping itself; straying away from simple and visually striking maps and instead embracing a variety of styles and natures per map per case study. The result is to ensure the scholarly use of GIS and maps grounded in empirical evidence with clear conceptions of their limitations to provide a platform for quality analysis.

         The case study of particular interest to me was about the spatial nature of Jewish ghettos in Budapest. The use of GIS in this chapter was to approach the Jewish ghettos from multiple angles to create a better understanding of the space that they lived in. The stated reasoning and methodology of assigning Jews to a ghetto did not remain the same after an initial attempt and the city, with its readjustment of ghetto classification, brought the ghetto to the Jew as opposed to mass relocation. Additionally, this chapter viewed a form of a soft wall around the ghetto in terms of average distance one could walk in 30-min and 60-min intervals to determine where Jews were allocated in the city based off of their temporal time constraints. This method, explored through GIS, does not provide hard evidence, but suggests where which hospitals, markets, and streets saw the most Jewish traffic and in conjunction with normal lay transports and streets, how visible the Jewish population was in terms of their routes taken on the street and their apartments. This case study primarily served as context to better understanding the individual stories in Budapest as well as to better understand the life of individuals during the Holocaust as victims and bystanders.